Did Relic learn their lessons with DoW3?

1 MOBAs are a dead genre.
The entire problem of the game, started with to be not in touch with the market and listen to wrong advises.
There are maybe 2 or 3 games, that did with that concept make money, but beside them MOBAs do fail all the time.

or top played games, you see beside DOTA2, there are no other MOBA titles in top 100 played
and that game is from 2013 lol. While you do have several RTS games. http://steamcharts.com/

2 Don't make games cartoony, RTS people are Adults and even Kids don't like such graphics.

3 Don't listen to professional reviews and E-Sports, who have no idea about RTS games

4 Be careful what you say, a lot of statements did massively backfire
like "MOBA good and RTS dead genre" did trigger a lot people

5 Take Age of Empires Community Serious.
They are even more conservative than DoW, most of them still use old windows 7 or older to play games.
Age of Empires Definitive Edition is going to fail by Microsoft store,
so use it as argument for Steam version of AoE4.

6 to keep a game alive it needs patches, not free give aways on humble bundle.

Comments

@StarSauron said:
or top played games, you see beside DOTA2, there are no other MOBA titles in top 100 played
and that game is from 2013 lol. While you do have several RTS games. http://steamcharts.com/

Boy oh boy, do I wonder if its because other popular MOBAs have their own platforms, where you can't measure it, but LoL is much larger then DOTA in terms of player base and you only see a tiny fraction of SMITE on steam as it was for years on its own platform, building massive community before hitting steam to increase reach even further.

See, the thing with MOBAs is, its completely irrelevant how many of them are and what new they are trying to do(looking at you, HOTS) as they require massive populations to work, hence players concentrated around 3-4 most popular ones, which ARE the genre.

3 Don't listen to professional reviews and E-Sports, who have no idea about RTS games

Soooo if relic doesn't listen to professional reviews and e-sports, who have no idea about RTS games, how is that a bad thing again?

5 Take Age of Empires Community Serious.
They are even more conservative than DoW, most of them still use old windows 7 or older to play games.
Age of Empires Definitive Edition is going to fail by Microsoft store,

so use it as argument for Steam version of AoE4.

You're extremely naive is you believe ANY title locked to microsoft windows store and win10 only is anything but a marketing tool to make people switch to win10.
Microsoft wants gamers to switch by delivering continuations of most popular franchises and locking them to win10, nothing deeper here, pure marketing, except instead of regular ads, you have "incentive" to make a switch.

Not even close man. A game that looks brighter (assuming thats why you think its cartoony) does not make it a cartoony.

The only thing in DoW 3 that could be perceived as cartoony is gabes flip. The rest No.

Here are a few example of games with cartoony artstyle Team fortress, Fortnite, those new moba games by blizzard forgot the name, you can tell just by looking at the faces.

Even SC 2 that is very bright is not cartoony imo.

It's not about brightness or colors. It's generally flashy animations, VFX and overall model/environment design giving some sort of cell-shading vibe. It cannot be fixed with toning down or anything, well, it cannot be fixed at all at this point, best we just drop this argument tbh...

Not even close man. A game that looks brighter (assuming thats why you think its cartoony) does not make it a cartoony.

The only thing in DoW 3 that could be perceived as cartoony is gabes flip. The rest No.

Here are a few example of games with cartoony artstyle Team fortress, Fortnite, those new moba games by blizzard forgot the name, you can tell just by looking at the faces.

Even SC 2 that is very bright is not cartoony imo.

It's not about brightness or colors. It's generally flashy animations, VFX and overall model/environment design giving some sort of cell-shading vibe. It cannot be fixed with toning down or anything, well, it cannot be fixed at all at this point, best we just drop this argument tbh...

Not even close man. A game that looks brighter (assuming thats why you think its cartoony) does not make it a cartoony.

The only thing in DoW 3 that could be perceived as cartoony is gabes flip. The rest No.

Here are a few example of games with cartoony artstyle Team fortress, Fortnite, those new moba games by blizzard forgot the name, you can tell just by looking at the faces.

Even SC 2 that is very bright is not cartoony imo.

It's not about brightness or colors. It's generally flashy animations, VFX and overall model/environment design giving some sort of cell-shading vibe. It cannot be fixed with toning down or anything, well, it cannot be fixed at all at this point, best we just drop this argument tbh...

wasn't there a thread which displayed the difference in the way some models look?

For the rest of it however, I can totally agree with some minor animation quirks which give off a cartoony vibe, especially some running animations and the way things are sync'd, as well as the speed at which these animations are run which makes them look too quick and stingy.

Not even close man. A game that looks brighter (assuming thats why you think its cartoony) does not make it a cartoony.

The only thing in DoW 3 that could be perceived as cartoony is gabes flip. The rest No.

Here are a few example of games with cartoony artstyle Team fortress, Fortnite, those new moba games by blizzard forgot the name, you can tell just by looking at the faces.

Even SC 2 that is very bright is not cartoony imo.

It's not about brightness or colors. It's generally flashy animations, VFX and overall model/environment design giving some sort of cell-shading vibe. It cannot be fixed with toning down or anything, well, it cannot be fixed at all at this point, best we just drop this argument tbh...

wasn't there a thread which displayed the difference in the way some models look?

For the rest of it however, I can totally agree with some minor animation quirks which give off a cartoony vibe, especially some running animations and the way things are sync'd, as well as the speed at which these animations are run which makes them look too quick and stingy.

This sums it up. Also a lot of the bigger attacks are a bit too flashy, like Dreadnaught slam or that greandes have no timer anymore.

yea there are a few effects which could be toned down, but all of these things seem to be adjustable and could easily be fixed if we had the tools to do so. Hell I just want a full modding API so I can add some forgeworld models and more for myself, including my heresy era relic armors.

They could easily fix these themselves it would seem, so hopefully we see some adjustments to this later on.

Not even close man. A game that looks brighter (assuming thats why you think its cartoony) does not make it a cartoony.

The only thing in DoW 3 that could be perceived as cartoony is gabes flip. The rest No.

Here are a few example of games with cartoony artstyle Team fortress, Fortnite, those new moba games by blizzard forgot the name, you can tell just by looking at the faces.

Even SC 2 that is very bright is not cartoony imo.

It's not about brightness or colors. It's generally flashy animations, VFX and overall model/environment design giving some sort of cell-shading vibe. It cannot be fixed with toning down or anything, well, it cannot be fixed at all at this point, best we just drop this argument tbh...

wasn't there a thread which displayed the difference in the way some models look?

For the rest of it however, I can totally agree with some minor animation quirks which give off a cartoony vibe, especially some running animations and the way things are sync'd, as well as the speed at which these animations are run which makes them look too quick and stingy.

This sums it up. Also a lot of the bigger attacks are a bit too flashy, like Dreadnaught slam or that greandes have no timer anymore.

yea there are a few effects which could be toned down, but all of these things seem to be adjustable and could easily be fixed if we had the tools to do so. Hell I just want a full modding API so I can add some forgeworld models and more for myself, including my heresy era relic armors.

They could easily fix these themselves it would seem, so hopefully we see some adjustments to this later on.

One would then question tho, why they didn t.....

Evil tongues might say, that they did abandon the game or were only in for the money in the first place....

It's because the game looks like it was pushed out before it was finished.

1 Well about the MOBA thing, why did they say such nonsense in first place ?
You know how "people work" at least should do, if you are by advertisement.
It was so dumb statement, like if you from Democrat party and say,
" go vote Trump, he is better than Hillary for President",
so bad was that MOBA statement from Relic.

Perhaps people wouldn't even notice all that MOBA elements.

2 Em, even by low budged and short shifted,
it still should have been possible to make some tweaks in the graphics,
to let it look less cartoony at release.

And that 2 points should have been really obvious, even if you are not a gamer at all.

Not even close man. A game that looks brighter (assuming thats why you think its cartoony) does not make it a cartoony.

The only thing in DoW 3 that could be perceived as cartoony is gabes flip. The rest No.

Here are a few example of games with cartoony artstyle Team fortress, Fortnite, those new moba games by blizzard forgot the name, you can tell just by looking at the faces.

Even SC 2 that is very bright is not cartoony imo.

It's not about brightness or colors. It's generally flashy animations, VFX and overall model/environment design giving some sort of cell-shading vibe. It cannot be fixed with toning down or anything, well, it cannot be fixed at all at this point, best we just drop this argument tbh...

wasn't there a thread which displayed the difference in the way some models look?

For the rest of it however, I can totally agree with some minor animation quirks which give off a cartoony vibe, especially some running animations and the way things are sync'd, as well as the speed at which these animations are run which makes them look too quick and stingy.

This sums it up. Also a lot of the bigger attacks are a bit too flashy, like Dreadnaught slam or that greandes have no timer anymore.

yea there are a few effects which could be toned down, but all of these things seem to be adjustable and could easily be fixed if we had the tools to do so. Hell I just want a full modding API so I can add some forgeworld models and more for myself, including my heresy era relic armors.

They could easily fix these themselves it would seem, so hopefully we see some adjustments to this later on.

One would then question tho, why they didn t.....

Evil tongues might say, that they did abandon the game or were only in for the money in the first place....

It's because the game looks like it was pushed out before it was finished.

And then no offiicial statement was made......?

generally don't get an official statement on someone in a company saying "yea so and so forced us to push out this unfinished game", bad for investors and the like. Only when a game spectacularly fails (dawn of war 3 isn't one of them) like ME: Andromeda, do we ever get an official half sincere statement on how it failed because it was unfinished.

Not even close man. A game that looks brighter (assuming thats why you think its cartoony) does not make it a cartoony.

The only thing in DoW 3 that could be perceived as cartoony is gabes flip. The rest No.

Here are a few example of games with cartoony artstyle Team fortress, Fortnite, those new moba games by blizzard forgot the name, you can tell just by looking at the faces.

Even SC 2 that is very bright is not cartoony imo.

It's not about brightness or colors. It's generally flashy animations, VFX and overall model/environment design giving some sort of cell-shading vibe. It cannot be fixed with toning down or anything, well, it cannot be fixed at all at this point, best we just drop this argument tbh...

wasn't there a thread which displayed the difference in the way some models look?

For the rest of it however, I can totally agree with some minor animation quirks which give off a cartoony vibe, especially some running animations and the way things are sync'd, as well as the speed at which these animations are run which makes them look too quick and stingy.

This sums it up. Also a lot of the bigger attacks are a bit too flashy, like Dreadnaught slam or that greandes have no timer anymore.

yea there are a few effects which could be toned down, but all of these things seem to be adjustable and could easily be fixed if we had the tools to do so. Hell I just want a full modding API so I can add some forgeworld models and more for myself, including my heresy era relic armors.

They could easily fix these themselves it would seem, so hopefully we see some adjustments to this later on.

One would then question tho, why they didn t.....

Evil tongues might say, that they did abandon the game or were only in for the money in the first place....

It's because the game looks like it was pushed out before it was finished.

And then no offiicial statement was made......?

generally don't get an official statement on someone in a company saying "yea so and so forced us to push out this unfinished game", bad for investors and the like. Only when a game spectacularly fails (dawn of war 3 isn't one of them) like ME: Andromeda, do we ever get an official half sincere statement on how it failed because it was unfinished.

Yeah I don't know if we'll ever get the full story of what happened with DOW3. The studio behind ME: Andromeda was basically shut down so the devs had nothing to lose by telling their story. My gut tells me that AOE4 had something to do with it. Microsoft might have demanded that Relic couldn't be working on another project while AOE4 was in development so DOW3 got pushed out early. It's just speculation but that feels right to me.

For the rest of it however, I can totally agree with some minor animation quirks which give off a cartoony vibe, especially some running animations and the way things are sync'd, as well as the speed at which these animations are run which makes them look too quick and stingy.

It's a nice try, but globally it won't change anything. There are only two screenshots and changing gamma, brightness or fog won't have such a big effect. You still can't do anything with anims, VFX and everything else...

I don't think MOBAs are the real issue. I think that putting a tried and tested concept aside and trying to make it into a MOBA-hybrid is a recipe for alienating the established player base while not convincing a new one. In the end, I don't even think that was the main issue. A boring-mission, predictable story campaign with a bunch of bland characters who have no depth and whose script is consistently cheesy. Uninspiring soundtrack. Graphics which are serviceable, yet otherwise unremarkable. Three factions only. Small maps. Unit dialogue is hit and miss. All that for 60$. When you look at Dawn of War 1 and its achievements, it is hard to argue. Relic has failed to make a SEQUEL. A game which builds rather than rewrites upon its predecessors. Dawn of War 3 is a product of a fundamental insecurity which dares not build upon what it has done right, yet instead seeks solutions from the industry which evolves so quickly that playing catch-up will always leave you at the back. Dawn of War 3, in this form, has no reason to exist. It is a MOBA-hybrid with 40k skin that simply uses a well known trademark as its title. However, it doesn't, in earnest, understand what was it that put the franchise on the map. Dawn of War 1 was built as the 40k RTS. A game which will be a full depiction of 40k in an RTS. This game fundamentally misses that mark. What angers me is that there have been many fans, myself included, who tried to write honest and sincere warnings prior to release, only to be repeatedly dismissed as trolls or self-entitled fanboys. Yet, in my posts I warned explicitly that this game has no target audience. Now, when I see 300 people online, I can only pull my hair. I bought the game and gave it an honest shot. It just isn't a great game and Relic's name is more and more in doubt.

Limited maps with 3 lines instead of broad, open maps with a geography of their own. A set of objectives to achieve victory, rather than destruction of opponent or even control of the map (granted modes have been added). Maps have very limited environment interaction unlike previous games making them arenas instead of locations. This immediately ties into the fact that less maneuvering room means that all units have a very narrow role to play. I don't mind semi-strong heroes, I actually even liked the Elite units. It is more that in many ways it is a step back from the grand 40k feast that was DoW1. Everything smaller, tighter, narrower and simpler.

@mcmaha1 said:
Limited maps with 3 lines instead of broad, open maps with a geography of their own

Powercore sucks, no one disputes that. The rest of it however is very much like older maps from previous games.

set of objectives to achieve victory, rather than destruction of opponent or even control of the map (granted modes have been added).

the fact that new modes have been added does kinda recycle my point about powercore being the only real aspect of a MOBA. But powercore isn't the whole game....though it unfortunately was for a short while.

Maps have very limited environment interaction unlike previous games making them arenas instead of locations

eh...kinda. With the exception of the totally pointless destructible terrain (least when you hit T2 in dow 2), the maps were all basically arenas in DoW 1 and 2. There were few good maps in the previous games which were really unique, DoW SS had some of the better ones with unique points like the strongholds. Very few maps were actually something other than arenas.

This immediately ties into the fact that less maneuvering room means that all units have a very narrow role to play.

same for the previous two games, every unit had a narrow ++heresy redacted++ role to play.

It is more that in many ways it is a step back from the grand 40k feast that was DoW1

that trend had been continuing since Dawn of War 2 in terms of mechanics, though DoW 2 conquered the story for the franchise. But let's also be honest, we're not talking dawn of war 1, we're comparing to Dawn of War DC and SS which were honestly the peak of the franchise.

more to this, the only thing that can be listed as a MOBA would be the powercore mode...that's it really. And that's long since been rendered barren in the wake of both Annihilation and mods.

@mcmaha1 said:
Limited maps with 3 lines instead of broad, open maps with a geography of their own. A set of objectives to achieve victory, rather than destruction of opponent or even control of the map (granted modes have been added). Maps have very limited environment interaction unlike previous games making them arenas instead of locations. This immediately ties into the fact that less maneuvering room means that all units have a very narrow role to play. I don't mind semi-strong heroes, I actually even liked the Elite units. It is more that in many ways it is a step back from the grand 40k feast that was DoW1. Everything smaller, tighter, narrower and simpler.

While I agree with many of your criticisms, we don't know how much of the final product is based on flawed design or compromises made because the game was rushed. Launching with only one weird MP mode is so bone-headed that I can't believe Relic was entirely happy with that. I'm willing to give Relic the benefit of the doubt that they knew this was a sub-par product at launch.

@Lockerd said:
that trend had been continuing since Dawn of War 2 in terms of mechanics, though DoW 2 conquered the story for the franchise. But let's also be honest, we're not talking dawn of war 1, we're comparing to Dawn of War DC and SS which were honestly the peak of the franchise.

So, in my head, when I played DoW3 multiplayer, I had to think about left-mid-right. And that to me made clear that this game had an internal logic of a MOBA. Now, whether I am misremembering and idealizing DoW1, it is possible. I just know that for me DoW3 didn't top that. I think a sequel should never aim to do less than the predecessor and this game feels that way. But what you say is true, for me DC represents the absolute peak of the franchise. SS added two cool new factions but otherwise felt derivative. However, DC felt like a fleshed out 40k incarnation of 7 factions and one hell of a campaign. I don't mind linear campaigns actually, they often have a more coherent story in fact like in DoW2 which had its own missteps. It is more that this campaign did nothing remarkable. The overall game didn't accomplish anything of note and yes, that saddens me greatly. Perhaps I use the term MOBA to highlight how far it is from the peaks of the predecessor and while it isn't a full MOBA ofc, it definitely feels like it seeks inspiration from industry hits rather than its own remarkable accomplishments.

@mcmaha1 said:
Limited maps with 3 lines instead of broad, open maps with a geography of their own. A set of objectives to achieve victory, rather than destruction of opponent or even control of the map (granted modes have been added). Maps have very limited environment interaction unlike previous games making them arenas instead of locations. This immediately ties into the fact that less maneuvering room means that all units have a very narrow role to play. I don't mind semi-strong heroes, I actually even liked the Elite units. It is more that in many ways it is a step back from the grand 40k feast that was DoW1. Everything smaller, tighter, narrower and simpler.

Honestly DoW 2 has a crap ton of lane based maps. Alot of RTS games do. Kasyr lutien from DoW 1, argus gate or any other 2 v2 or 3 v 3 map. Lane based maps alone does not make DoW 3 a moba imo.

Also the other DoW games had pretty little interaction on their maps too with exception DoW 2 and the only thing that was worth interacting with was directional cover and even then it became obsolete rather quick. Garrison cover was pretty pointless except for in,the first 5 minutes to annoy nid players.

Map design is tricky. Maps as you are describing are difficult if not impossible to balance. They are always gonna hover towards symmetrical layouts so no side has an advantage over the other.